Unless otherwise indicated herein, the approaches described in this section are not prior art to the claims in this application and are not admitted to be prior art by inclusion in this section.
As integration of functionalities in devices increase, more and more devices are being capable of a wide variety of functionalities. For example, in the health related field, a health related electronic device may be capable of providing the functionality of treating and monitoring a patient for a wide variety of health related applications. An example of a health related device having a wide variety of functionalities may include a health related device for treatment of a heart condition. For example, a heart condition that may be experienced by a patient, who has a heart experiencing some condition such as, but not limited to, an arrhythmia, which may lead to a condition known as sudden cardiac arrest (SCA). In an SCA condition, the heart may fail to pump blood effectively, and as a result, death may occur. An example type of arrhythmia, which may be associated with SCA, may be a condition known as ventricular fibrillation (VF). VF may be a condition where a ventricle or ventricles, which make up the heart to facilitate the pumping of blood, may make uncoordinated movements instead of steady rhythmic movements. In the VF condition, the heart may not pump adequate amount of blood or may not pump blood at all, which may eventually lead to death.
A healthcare related device may be utilized to help treat VF by defibrillating the heart. An example of a healthcare related device may be a monitor or a cardioverter defibrillator device, which may be referred to as a defibrillator or a defibrillator device. A defibrillator device may be capable of providing an electrical signal, commonly in the form of an electric shock, to the heart in an arrhythmia condition, such as a tachycardia, for example, a ventricular tachycardia (VT) or ventricular fibrillation (VF). The defibrillator device may provide the electrical signal to a heart externally (i.e., through the surface of a body) via accessories commonly known as electrodes. Commonly in the form of a pad, as the name may imply, the electrode may facilitate transfer of the electrical signal from the defibrillator device to the heart through the surface of the body.
In addition to the capability of defibrillating a patient's heart, the defibrillator device may be capable of providing a wide variety of health related treatments. Additionally, the defibrillator device may be capable of determining a wide variety of health related information about the patient (e.g., by monitoring and/or measuring health related activities of the person). In order for the defibrillator device to determine the information, the defibrillator device may be communicatively coupled to various peripheral components. For example, a health monitoring device may include the capabilities of monitoring a person's oxygen saturation level. In order to determine the person's oxygen saturation level, a component such as a sensor may be communicatively coupled to the defibrillator device with the sensor being attached to the patient.
In another example, the defibrillator device may include electrocardiography (ECG) capabilities. In order to use the defibrillator device as an ECG device, the ECG electrodes may be attached to the patient.
As may be appreciated, the above described examples of capabilities of the defibrillator device are but just a couple of examples, and the defibrillator device may include a wide variety of capabilities for a wide variety of applications. For example the defibrillator device may have capabilities of determining and monitoring activity related to a patient's circulatory system, where a patient's blood pressure may be measured with a pneumatic related component such as, but not limited to, a blood pressure cuff.
The example capabilities described may be facilitated by various connectors such as, but not limited to, electrical connectors and/or pneumatic connectors. As a patient may be moved from one defibrillator and/or monitoring device having some capabilities to another defibrillator and/or monitoring device having some different and/or more capabilities, the various connectors may be disconnected from one defibrillator device and reconnected to the other defibrillator device. Alternatively, the various connectors from one defibrillator device may be detached from the patient, and connectors from the other defibrillator device may be attached to the patient. As may be appreciated, disconnecting and reconnecting and/or detaching and attaching may cause an interruption in treatment and/or monitoring.